Ray Bradbury's take on censorship and inclusivism

[zandperl]

I just reread Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (first read in high school). The edition I had included two afterwords, one of which discusses some letters he received from readers in this and other books of his. A number of these letters, he says, criticize his treatment (or lack thereof) of blacks and women. Bradbury harshly rebuts that this is

Comments

[ayashi]

This reminds me of this post someone linked me from a fandom post secret community a couple of weeks ago.

Granted a lot of people are coming from the fanfic POV and they aren't quite reaching Ray Bradbury's level of fame. :P But even so they sure to seem to share some of the same ideas!

http://community.livejournal.com/fandomsecrets/516771.html?thread=321119395#t321119395

For the people who say, "But my reality only includes white people! That doesn't make me racist!" I think they're kind of missing the point of what people are saying when they say they'd like to see more diversity...

[zandperl]

I once posted to the NaNoWriMo forum asking for suggestions for names that were not "white names," but weren't stereotypical, because I wanted to write a story set in the future where the races had all melded together well and race was not an issue. Someone replied "why are you forcing the issue, you should just put in normal names" - entirely missing the point that white names are only "normal" if you only care about whites.

[calzephyr77]

I wonder though - I would not be comfortable writing characters with ethnicities not similar to mine. That would seem kind of cheap - I couldn't bring authenticity to a non-caucasian character at all, for example. I have Fahrenheit 451 somewhere, but I think it only includes the first afterword. I didn't realize there was a second one - I should get a newer copy than the ratty used bookstore one I have :-)

He doesn't show understanding of the distinction between elective special interest groups, and minority status imposed upon one by society, and he also doesn't show understanding of the privilege/status/power involved in the involuntary minority statuses. I would also have to dig out The Martian Chronicles, but I do believe there is one story where he does show it - one character goes a little nuts about the extinct Martian society and in trying to recruit another crew member to his cause, appeals to that crew member's mixed Cherokee heritage. All in all, though, he's pretty much stuck in whitey world. His stories are really a

[zandperl]

I would not be comfortable writing characters with ethnicities not similar to mine.

Hm, interesting. On the one hand, that makes sense, you would want to be authentic and not offend anyone by doing it wrong. On the other hand, professional writers can take the time to do the research and write them authentically and have someone relevant edit it after; if you're writing about the future, what's to say that people of your own ethnicity will be the same as we are today, so why should a different ethnicity be any harder than your own; I think in the short term as we colorize SF that yes, lots of writers will try and fail, but in the long term the writing profession will learn from those failures as well as the individual writers learning to broaden their minds as well.

[calzephyr77]

Yup, it's like when Americans write about Canadians - they do a lot of research, but they can never really get us right or just can't tap into the national vibe :-D It's not offensive to me, but it just comes off as a caricature.

I think I'm a little more sensitive to things that seemed like forced diversity from years of taking in American media that hasn't been reflective of Canada's population and sense of multiculturalism (East Asians and Chinese people are the top two visible minorities here). Multiculturalism in American media has always had this taint of obligation to it. It wasn't an organic growth and growing up I sensed it wasn't the will of the people at the time. I recently watched a Free to Be, You and Me clip on YouTube and I tried to think of how groundbreaking it must have been to have white and black kids dancing together in the 70s, but I can't truly feel it, just as I can't quite appreciate that Mom couldn't get a credit card because she was a single woman.

if you're writing about the future, what's to say that

[blahblahboy]

At the risk of being racist, I'm not sure I would want everybody in the world to write with the same racial diversity. I want to say that diversity of writing styles should allow writers to write however they'd like. For example, why dont the Berenstain Bears books have black bears? Or polar bears? I'm also not sure that having a more diverse cast of characters would necessarily make a book better. For example, did I care that Harry Potter dated a ... Korean?... girl? Did that make the depth of the story better

[calzephyr77]

Speaking of, do you know any stories written by disabled people about people with disabilities in the future? I didn't realize that someone "getting their legs back" was a common trope in SF until IO9 found at least 20 novels. Sigh! As much fun as IO9 is, it makes me think every idea I have ever had was a horrible cliche :-)

[zandperl]

No. It's so rare that I had a post a while ago about a SF writing contest about people with disabilities.

[calzephyr77]

Thanks! That's perfect actually in a way.